


meanwhile, the wild geese fly home

by fruitwhirl



Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: F/M, adoption & pregnancy struggles, speculative fic post 706
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-07
Updated: 2020-03-07
Packaged: 2021-02-28 20:54:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,713
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23053534
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fruitwhirl/pseuds/fruitwhirl
Summary: Ten months in, they’re still trying—it’s just not rigidly scheduled out, nor does the pregnancy war room still exist. A week after Shaw’s, Amy throws away the big calendar and they toss most of the vitamins except for the ones that taste like straight sugar and make his hair smooth, because he is not going back to non-silky tresses. The billowy hammer pants that almost got him arrested get tossed in the back of the closet, and they now use the fancy thermometer for cooking chicken.They eliminate as much of the pressure as they can, but the hope for pregnancy still lingers, zephyrs ofwhat ifthat curl around their toes and seep into their skin.
Relationships: Jake Peralta/Amy Santiago
Comments: 12
Kudos: 100





	meanwhile, the wild geese fly home

**Author's Note:**

> _"let the soft animal of your body love what it loves."_
> 
> this title comes from "wild geese" by mary oliver, a poem which has captured my heart for the past few years.

Some nights, in the few minutes right before she’s fallen asleep and one of her hands lazily traces his jawline, Amy will whisper about seeing toddlers perched on their fathers’ shoulders in Trader Joe’s or holding their mothers’ hands while crossing streets. The longing in her voice is near palpable, tinging Jake’s own heart with an ache he can’t dissipate. He doesn’t want to burden her with his own struggles, but he doesn’t want her to feel alone in this either, doesn’t want to hide, so he returns her yearning, telling her about the men he sees wearing baby bjorns with _whole babies_ in them and the witness he interviews who absentmindedly cradles her growing bump while describing a grisly murder.

Ten months in, they’re still trying—it’s just not rigidly scheduled out, nor does the pregnancy war room still exist. A week after Shaw’s, Amy throws away the big calendar and they toss most of the vitamins except for the ones that taste like straight sugar and make his hair smooth, because he is _not_ going back to non-silky tresses. The billowy hammer pants that almost got him arrested get tossed in the back of the closet, and they now use the fancy thermometer for cooking chicken. 

They eliminate as much of the pressure as they can, but the hope for pregnancy still lingers, zephyrs of _what if_ that curl around their toes and seep into their skin.

Every time Jake goes to the grocery store, he wonders if he should be buying kale or quinoa to improve their chances. Amy doesn’t take at-home pregnancy tests anymore—she keeps one in the back of the medicine cabinet, just in case—but each time she gets her period, there’s a sadness that hangs in the air for the first day or two before fading. They don’t talk about baby names (not anymore), but he knows that she has the list they made up tucked in the back of her sock drawer.

But he and Amy are nearly perfectly content in how they are now. Or they try to be, at least. Although they want to grow their family, they’ve tried to stop attaching so much worth to it. They have each other and will always have each other—in this, they find solace. Solace in the afternoons they spend curled up on the couch, watching trash reality shows like _Love is Blind_ and throwing popcorn at the screen when someone is left at the altar. Solace in the nights when she digs her popsicle feet into his calves and wakes up to wool socks warming her toes. Solace in the hot pink sticky-notes Jake finds on his desk almost daily that say things like, _I’m so grateful to love you_ and _you make my life so much brighter,_ and _I rented the Holly wig for tonight._

As much as they can, they go out on honest-to-goodness dates to see new musicals like _Beetlejuice_ (which leaves them in a stupor on the Lyft home) and picnics in Prospect Park and to restaurants too fancy to name and even the reconstructed Sal’s Pizza. It makes Jake remember the years that he and Amy referred to each other only by venomously-spat last names and made bets based on spite rather than playful competition and he laughs at their growth, at the way he can’t see a universe where she’s not the sun and the moon and the stars to him.

Over dinner one night, Amy runs her thumb against his palm and says, “Genevieve gave me the information for the adoption agency she and Charles used.” At his widening eyes, she laughs. “Charles doesn’t know about it—Genevieve said it was our decision if we wanted to get him involved.”

This isn’t the first time they’ve talked about adoption. Briefly, they discussed IVF, even went to a reproductive endocrinologist, but when he explained the process and expense, Amy was silent, biting her lip. And on the ride back to their apartment, she quietly told him that she wouldn’t be able to handle it if they went through IVF and it didn’t work. At home, she cried into the crook of his neck, and he rubbed her back until her hiccups slowed and she pulled away to press her wet cheek to his, breathing out, “I love you,” which he returned without a second thought.

But adoption was something he waited for her to bring up, which she eventually did while they were washing dishes. Or well, Jake was drying plates. However, that was short, vague— _what if?_ _What if we did this? What if we go down this path?_

“Okay,” he says now, moves to enclose her fiddling left hand with both of his. “How do you feel about it?”

“We could make a difference in a child’s life,” she says, and she smiles something small. “And grow our family. But,” her gaze floats down to her half-eaten cheesecake. “It’s so much money, Jake. And it can take _years_ , and it’s so complicated, and there’s not even a guarantee the adoption would go through the first time.”

“But it could.”

“It could.”

Jake brings their gathered hands to his lips, kisses them. “Amy, whatever you want to do, I’m all in.”

Because adoption costs an absurd amount of money, even independently, they decide to start allocating portions of their paychecks to this for the next six months before starting with lawyers and social workers. The money goes in a separate savings account that apparently compounds interest or something crazy smart according to Amy, though Jake doesn’t get it. He just knows that they’re saving up for their family.

It helps knowing that adoption is a real, viable option. He knows it would be hard—he remembers what his partner went through to get Nikolaj—but it would also be beyond worth it. Eventually, he does mention it to Charles, who (for once) doesn’t overreact, instead giving him the number of an agent he knows as well as advice for the process.

Weirdly, knowing that they have (or will have) the support and resources to hopefully adopt does wonders for Jake and Amy’s sex life.

It’s cheesy as hell, but they don’t just have sex or _UD_ anymore—they make love. Sure, sometimes it happens in Supply Closet J (which, thank God, does not have CPR dolls or hundreds of furry rodents), but it always starts and ends with toothy grins and soft words. And frankly, they try to forget about the potential baby-making aspect of it all. To her credit, Amy doesn’t even track her ovulation. She doesn’t go back on birth control and Jake doesn’t use condoms, but it’s more out of habit than anything, and neither of them will mutter into the other’s warm skin, “What if that was _it_?” They can’t love their way to a pregnancy, but they can love each other.

Neither of them thinks anything of it when she misses her period in July.

Over the past year, her cycle has been fairly irregular (a mix between stress from the adoption process and trying and the natural ebb and flow of menstruation), and she’s been late four different months. So, when it’s the fifteenth and she doesn’t get her period, she shrugs and asks Jake to toss an extra tampon into her purse, just in case Aunt Flo visits during work.

Two weeks later, though, Amy tells him that she still hasn’t gotten it.

“What do you want to do?” he asks.

She sighs, digs out the pink box that moved to dwell underneath the sink behind boxes of band-aids and pantyliners and extra bottles of shampoo. And so they play the waiting game they’ve gotten all too good at.

“What if we just don’t look at it,” she suggests after the five minutes are up. “I mean, if I’m not pregnant, then I’ll get my period in a few days and we’ll know for sure.”

“And if you are?”

“Then I guess I’ll start throwing up or something in a few weeks. We’d eventually figure it out.”

“I don’t know if that’s the best strategy, Ames.” But he laughs, kisses the side of her head softly. When she doesn’t move, he offers to look at it.

Amy shakes her head. “I know what it’s going to say, so there’s no point in delaying the inevitable.”

He nods, and she stands, takes the little white stick and glances at it. Something in her face changes, but he can’t read her expression—is it sadness? Happiness? Confusion? It’s one of those electronic tests, so it should read “PREGNANT” or not instead of tricking them with fickle pink lines.

She bites her lip.

“Do you still feel the same way about adoption?”

A little part of his heart sinks to the floor, but a larger portion of it grows warm and he can’t help but grin. “I’m all in, Ames.”

She lets out a shaky laugh. “Well, how do you feel about waiting a little while longer?” Her eyes well up with tears, but the corner of her mouth flits up. “Maybe nine months?”

Jake furrows his eyebrows, and it takes a minute before her words register. “We’re—?”

“Yeah,” she says, smiling so brightly it blinds him. “We are.”

Standing from the edge of the bathtub where he’s perched, he shoots to his feet, cradles her face in his hands, and kisses her, soft and sweet and slow. He can taste salt on her—no, _their—_ lips, because he doesn’t realize it but he’s crying, too. Big, fat happy tears that will leave his cheeks raw and puffy. When they pull away, it’s not far, pressing their foreheads together and lingering in their shared breath.

One day, they’ll be struggling with the adoption agency and with lawyers and social workers so that they can grow their family further. Maybe their second child will be from Latvia like Nikolaj, or maybe they will already know about and love _Die Hard_ with a passion that rivals Jake’s. For now, though, they marvel at this small happiness, this little clump of cells the size of a pea that has ruled their lives for the past year.

(Which Jake can definitely train to love _Die Hard._ )

**Author's Note:**

> after trying explored jake and amy's issues so well and emphasized their love for each other, i didn't know how to take this fic. i didn't want them to just have a baby after another month of trying or to consider adoption but set it aside to be forgotten when/if jake and amy do get pregnant. here, i wanted to emphasize that adoption is just as viable as pregnancy, but that it can be just as hard if not harder. i have no idea how the show is going to handle it, but i'm sure they'll do this struggle justice.


End file.
